THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 74, April 12, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
KARL MARX PREACHED "FAIRNESS" TOO
By Alan Caruba
PRESIDENT OBAMA, THE U.S. TAX CODE, & THE AMERICAN ECONOMY: OBAMA'S PROBLEM REGARDING ECONOMIC & FISCAL POLICY: HIGH
UNEMPLOYMENT & UNDEREMPLOYMENT, NOT TAX FAIRNESS OR ECONOMIC REDISTRIBUTION -- WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IMPOSES HIGHER
TAXES ON BUSINESS CORPORATIONS & UPPER-INCOME PEOPLE: REDUCTION IN ECONOMICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES, SUCH AS WORKING &
INVESTING & STARTING BUSINESSES -- INCREASE IN UNPRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES, SUCH AS TAX AVOIDANCE & TAX EVASION
FULL STORY:
My father was a Certified Public Accountant and dinner time throughout my youth was filled with horror stories about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as he
struggled to keep up with a tax code that just kept growing.
According to Nina Olsen, the National Taxpayer Advocate for the IRS who heads a staff of 2,000, the American tax system is “a huge convoluted mess.” Despite
efforts to determine its length, it is variously estimated to be between 65,000 and 70,000 pages. “We looked at how many changes in the tax law (that) had
occurred in the last year alone,” said Olsen, “it was something like 579 changes.” No one can keep up with that volume of changes, not even Ms. Olsen’s office.
As this is being written, President Barack Obama is dominating the news cycle with his message of tax “fairness,” attacking men like Mitt Romney, the
presumptive Republican candidate, for being wealthy and citing men like Warren Buffett and other millionaires and multi-millionaires who say they should pay
more. It is a longtime populist, progressive message and it is a false message.
Chris Edwards who studies tax policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says:
“What happens when you raise taxes for higher-income
people; they reduce their productive activities — like
working and investing and starting businesses — and
they increase their unproductive activities — like tax
avoidance and tax evasion. So governments really
shoot themselves in the foot if they raise rates too
much.”
If it were not for “taxation without representation” Americans might still be “subjects” of the British Empire because, as any school child can tell you, the
American Revolution was fought over this issue and was kicked off in earnest by the Boston Tea Party, when a tax on tea enraged the citizens of that time.
There were, in fact, some ten other tea parties in the colonies.
The United States has the dubious honor of having the highest tax rate on corporations in the world. And some people still cannot understand why U.S.
corporations are shipping jobs overseas and foreign corporations are reluctant to set up U.S. headquarters here.
In a recent opinion in the Wall Street Journal, Amity Shales, a former WSJ reporter and now the director of a George W. Bush Institute project on
national economic growth, wrote that
“The trouble is that lawmakers (especially at the
federal level) insist on discussing tax reform in terms
of fairness. Tax competition earns a mention from
time to time, but only a mention.”
She pointed out, as have others, that “states with no income tax grow faster than those with high income taxes.”
By framing the tax debate in terms of fairness and attacking Mitt Romney’s wealth, President Obama is pandering to his greatest constituency — the stupid
among us. He was elected on the basis of a lot of gauzy, vague promises of hope and change, and with the adoring support of the mainstream media.
Obama’s problem is not about fairness or taxes. His problem is 13.9 million unemployed Americans, not counting those who are not looking for work or those
working part-time jobs just to make ends meet. As a recent commentary on EconomicCollapse.com pointed out, “The number of unemployed Americans
is larger than the entire population of Greece.”
The onerous, insane growth of the regulation industry at all levels of government is crushing the economy. “The U.S. national debt has increased by more
than four trillion dollars since Barack Obama took office” and, with the aid of a Democrat-controlled Congress for the first two years of his term, he increased
the national debt more than all the Presidents combined from Washington to Clinton.
Believing that taxing rich people will close the gap is unbelievably stupid. As a Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out on April 10, 2012, “The Obama
Treasury’s own numbers confirm that the tax (on the wealthy) would raise at most $5 billion a year — or less than 0.5% of the $1.2 trillion fiscal 2012 budget
deficit and over the next decade a mere 0.1% of the $45-43 trillion the federal government will spend.”
There is an alternative. It’s called the “Fair Tax,” and you can learn more about it by visiting the website of the National Taxpayers Union.
By bleeding jobs through an insane tax system, a federal tax code filled with loopholes that even the IRS cannot keep up with, the highest corporate tax in the
world, an idiotic immigration policy toward illegal aliens, and a burden on the fortunate few that still have jobs the United States is digging itself into financial
collapse.
The U.S. national government is broke. The states are broke. And, with the advent of $4 and $5 gas pump prices — thanks to Obama’s anti-energy policies
— the rest of us are getting more broke.
President Obama’s blather about “fairness” is straight out of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto with their emphasis the
redistribution of wealth and the end of private property.
© Alan Caruba, 2012.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Fiscal Policy: Taxation, Government Spending, & the Public Debt
Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at Warning Signs, his popular blog -- and thereafter on dozens of other
websites and blogs. His monthly report on new books is posted at Bookviews.
A business and science writer, Caruba is the Founder of The National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information
about "scare campaigns" designed to influence public opinion and public policy.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity