Category Archives: Taxation

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.”

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.”

MORE…

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.

Global Ghouls Rising

Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Political Economy, Regulation, Taxation

Since the onset of the economic crisis, the din has grown louder from assorted international institutions. It goes without saying that the demands are never for a dispersion of power. There have been various lunges for EU types of controls over financial institutions. Most of the resistance to the pull has come not from the US.

For example, and as I documented over this space, the Canadian government, not the American one, resisted a bank tax suggested by the the global regulatory regime.

Ministers fanned out across the world to raise opposition to the proposal for avoiding another financial crisis. ‘Canada is, and will remain, opposed to a tax that would penalize financial institutions that remained strong and prosperous while many of the world’s banks failed,’ Clement told a press conference with Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon.”

“In an apparent attempt to reignite damped discussions on a key regulatory issue,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “the IMF proposed that a half-dozen or so of the countries with the biggest financial centers—such as the U.S., U.K., and Japan—voluntarily agree to a set of guidelines to resolve failed systemically important international financial firms.”

Not-so curiously, in opposition are the European countries: “it is uncertain whether [they] want to cede sovereignty on the issue.” Some of these countries have also implemented austerity measures, which have angered hedonistic B. Hussein. Remember when our president instructed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to “print more money, not make it”?

If the IMF is looking for the political will to galvanize the globe, they will surely find it in the US.