Category Archives: Socialism

Facts About Those ‘Fat Cats’

Business, Economy, Human Accomplishment, Socialism, Taxation

In case you didn’t know:

“The top 1 percent of Americans pay about 38 percent of all our federal personal taxes (according to the National Taxpayers Union)?”

“Or that the top 5 percent pay just under 60 percent?”

“Or that the top 10 percent pay about 70 percent of all the personal income taxes collected in this great land of ours?”

“These ‘fat cats’ are the ones who do the heavy lifting in this country. They’re the ones whose federal tax dollars pick up a big chunk of the tab for all sorts of noble things, such as food for folks who don’t have enough to eat … medicine and doctors for people with little money … financial aid to help other people’s kids go to college … milk and diapers for poor babies whose 15-year-old mothers and deadbeat fathers are too irresponsible to take care of their own kids … a safety net for old folks who are retired on fixed incomes … and on and on. …”

“By the way, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners pay a paltry 2.7 percent of our federal income taxes. How many poor people do you think their tax dollars are taking care of? If you ask me, they’re the ones not paying their fair share. Every time they pass a ‘rich’ person on the street, they ought to say, ‘Thank you for everything you do me and for this country.'”

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.”

“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.

How Is The Oink Sector Holding Up?

Debt, Economy, Government, Labor, Political Economy, Socialism, Taxation, The State

How surprised is everyone that, as Cato Institute scholars affirm once again, “Federal workers make substantially more than private workers, not less, in addition to having a large advantage in benefits.”

Says USA Today: “Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.”

“Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.”

“Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.”

What’s more, “The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds”.

“The fast-growing pay of federal employees has captured the attention of fiscally conservative Republicans who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in last week’s elections. Already, some lawmakers are planning to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to challenge the president’s plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.” … MORE.

[SNIP]

From “Life in the Oink Sector”: “In the private sector a worker is paid for his productivity. If he were overpaid—in other words, remunerated more than he produces—the proprietor would go belly up. No business means no jobs.”

“Set aside the question of whether productivity—output per unit of labor—is the appropriate gauge in an enterprise, government, that confiscates and distributes wealth, but produces nothing. Understand this: Backed by the power of the State, the sponger sector has unlimited access to income not its own—it has the power to tax, borrow and mint money out of thin air. With such usurped authority, why would public debt that runs to the trillions deter the ongoing orgy?”

“By the standards of honest, if unorthodox, accounting, government workers, moreover, don’t pay taxes, but are paid out of taxes. In other words, they pay taxes out of money confiscated from taxpayers, who, in turn, pay taxes twice: on their own income and on the income of members of the bureaucracy.”

At the very least, state workers should not be allowed to vote, since a group that is able to vote itself raises and other perks, will do so with a vengeance. Again, why the surprise? This is why government should not be a source of so many professional parallels. Privatize these positions, the market will sort out the rest.