Category Archives: Economy

More False Arguments For Taxing The Rich

Democrats, Economy, Government, Socialism, Taxation

Shepard Smith of Fox News encapsulated what to him was the counter argument for taxes on the person earning $20 million annually: “He’ll be $1 million the poorer. Is that going to impact his life style, asked Smith? Will he fire the chauffeur? Not really.”

That’s also not really the right, utilitarian, economic argument for letting a man keep what is his. One million in the hands of government is one million dollars circulating the drain. As soon as you transfer private property into communal ownership, it’s as good as squandered. Left as private property, that money could be saved, invested in productive endeavors, or spent on consumer goods, which will generate work for producers.

How do you think the government collective will allocate $1million it has stolen, and has never worked to generate?

To the moral side of the matter:

From “The 2 Parties’ Question: How Much To Steal”: Taxes are private property plundered. The government has several ways to pay for its obligations, one of which is to seize private property in the form of taxes. The particular portion of the ‘stim’ and bailouts that was not borrowed or counterfeited by the Fed once belonged to individual Americans. Thus, a tax cut for high-income earners, who also pay most of the taxes, is tantamount to a return of stolen goods.
With a tax cut, the plundering class simply agrees to pilfer less. The notion that you must ‘pay for tax cuts’… is akin to a burglar promising to return the television he stole just as soon as he is in a better financial position.”

Meanwhile, “Democrats in the House and the Senate moved Thursday to limit the reductions, in full, only for families making $250,000 a year or less.”

Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism

Business, Criminal Injustice, Economy, Fascism, Law, Political Economy, Regulation, South-Africa, The State

The following is from my new column, “Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism,” now on WND.COM:

“It’s easy to be thrown off scent when trying to divine the vague, ill-defined, unconstitutional laws under which the Securities and Exchange Commission hunts for corporate prey. Suffice it to say that the SEC operates with the understanding that competition in capital markets must proceed from a level playing field. All investors are entitled to the same information advantage irrespective of effort and abilities.

In a word, information socialism.

In their latest efforts to bring ruin to capital markets, SEC blood hounds have ensnared some of the country’s most powerful hedge-fund firms. Indictments are replete with SEC cloak-and-dagger.

There is a Don, ‘Don Chu,’ which is how the accused, Don Ching Trang Chu, is called. A co-conspirator is ‘CC-1.’ And a cooperating witness: ‘CW-1.’ The companies violated, allegedly, are Atheros Communications, Inc. (‘Atheros’), Broadcom Corporation (‘Broadcom’), and ‘Sierra Wireless’—aka ‘The Tech Company.’

… Then there is the ‘The Firm.’ … The ominous entity at the center of the investigation. ….”

The complete column is “Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism,” now on WND.COM.

Some of you are waiting for, and have been asking about, the publication of Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. The wait is worse for South Africans who are in the thick of the events my book documents and analyzes—Into The Cannibal’s Pot is a Burkian polemic, steeped in history, reality, fact, and the classical liberal political philosophy.

When I completed the book some months back, the number of Boers murdered was just over 3000. The death toll now stands at 3,756.

The manuscript is currently under consideration. If all fails, fear not (with your help), someone will see to it that the true story of the New South Africa (“Rambo Nation”), as detailed in Into The Cannibal’s Pot, is told. Not everyone inhabits the solipsistic universe in which most American “writers” (and publishers) are mired. Five magnificent men (as writers, thinkers, and human beings) have returned high Praise For The Cannibal. Thank you; you know who you are.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

“Victims” Of Greed … Their Own

Business, Criminal Injustice, Debt, Economy, Regulation, Socialism

Now here’s a victims’ fund we can all get behind: delinquent borrowers being foreclosed upon by wicked bank executives. The WSJ:

‘Fund in works for victims of foreclosure mess,” announced the Washington Post’s front page yesterday. Sorry to report that the Post was not referring to taxpayers who have already spent hundreds of billions of dollars cleaning up this mess.

So who exactly are the victims in this story? The Post describes “homeowners who were wronged,” but the writers are also not referring to the roughly 90% of mortgage borrowers who are paying on time. As for the proposed compensation fund, the Post compares it to those set up for victims of the Gulf oil spill, the shootings at Virginia Tech and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Readers may begin to suspect that one of these funds is not like the others. For starters, we’re not aware of any delinquent borrowers being killed by bank executives. In fact it’s not easy to find any injury at all. The Post doesn’t name anyone who’s been harmed, and neither did Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd as he opened Tuesday’s Banking Committee hearing on the problems in the mortgage servicing industry. Don’t expect any further clarification at Thursday’s House Financial Services headline hunt.

Readers will recall that the foreclosure mini-scandal began in September with revelations that “robo-signers” at mortgage firms were signing foreclosure documents that they had not personally reviewed. Instead, they had improperly relied on the work of colleagues.

“[I]f a settlement transfers more wealth from investors and taxpayers (who now stand behind most mortgages) to delinquent borrowers, the least the attorneys general could do is stop calling them victims.”

MORE.

Oh, come on: is that the best you can do? How about Moochers? Looters? You’re right; that’s too mild too.

Debt Commission Dross

Debt, Economy, Military, Politics, Regulation, Ron Paul, Taxation, The State, War, Welfare

As has been said over these pixelated pages, “government commissions are where accountability goes to die.” You get my meaning. For example: Some major cost-cutting measures suggested by Obama’s deficit commission’s preliminary report only kick-in in 2050 and 2075.

Like his father, Rand Paul promises to be a beacon for liberty. Intuitively, Rand cleaves to free-market principles. Here are some salient points Rand has made in response to some silly questions, concerning the deficit commission’s preliminary report, fielded from Face The Nation moderator Bob Schieffer:

“… if you’re serious about the budget, you have to look at the entire budget–military and domestic, if you want to make a dent in the debt.

“…I don’t think I want to raise taxes right now. I think government
is too big and so I think we need to cut spending. The way I see it is, is that you want the private sector to have more money. I want to expand the private sector because we have a– a serious recession so I want to leave more money in the private sector. I want to shrink the ineffective sector of the economy which is the government.”

“… I want to be on the side of reducing spending. So I think really the compromise is where you find the reductions in spending. But I don’t think the compromise is in raising taxes. I mean here, you have to put things in perspective. We now consume at the federal level twenty-five percent of the Gross Domestic Product. [Actually, it is more like 40%, as a lot of spending is off budget] Historically, we were at twenty percent. So we’ve taken five percent away from the private sector. And the private sector is the engine that creates all these jobs. I want to send that five percent back to the private sector.”

“…you should shrink the federal work force and you should make their pay more comparable. Right now the total compensation for government workers versus private workers is almost two to one.”

“…make the tax cuts permanent.”

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