Posted on 11/23/2008 4:11:58 AM PST by reaganaut1
“Government can’t create wealth, it can only spread it. That’s the way this foolhardy plan should be attacked.”
Exactly. It literally is impossible for government to create jobs on balance. $1 billion in visible government-created “new” jobs can be achieved only by diverting $1 billion from the private sector, killing (invisibly) whatever jobs that $1 billion would have created. It’s worse, since every $1 billion in taxes results in an ADDITIONAL $300,000 or more of lost economic output (what economists call “deadweight losses”) since whatever we tax, we get less of.
So whenever Obama says he is creating new jobs, he either is being WILLFULLY deceptive (he knows the truth but has no incentive to let the public see the man behind the curtin) or he is stunningly IGNORANT. If people were to laugh derisively every time he made such statements, i.e., treat his remarks as being as nonsensical as the utterings of a Flat Earth Society member, perhaps he would more quickly realize that a) we are on to him and all his transparent efforts to manipulate opinion on the presumption we’re too ignorant to know better; or b) we’re smarter than him, and he’d better get his act together if he expects to serve as our president and not be tossed out on his ear.
Fixing roads and bridges that nobody can afford to use after 0 causes fuel prices to rise with his green goo policies.
Roads and bridges to nowhere.
It's not even an equal transfer. In order for the government to waste $1 billion in transfer of wealth to job programs, it needs to take well in excess of $1 billion because a good part of it will be used up in bureaucracy before it makes it to the jobs program. So you need to take $1.5-$1.75 billion to net $1 billion because a half to three quarters will get swallowed in bureaucracy.
I think we should get rid of the word tax and replace it with the words wealth spreading.
Note it says “save or” create jobs...HOW can one prove jobs were saved? That is saying they were not lost, and how cn one prove a negative? It is impossible, and he is a lawyer.
“I think we should get rid of the word tax and replace it with the words wealth spreading.”
The problem is that many tens of millions of Americans don’t find the notion of “wealth spreading” offensive. We are paradoxically a land of opportunity, but also great envy. The lopsided structure of our income tax system is living proof of this. Many people are perfectly comfortable with loading an ever-rising share of the tax load on the people at the top on grounds “they can afford it”, on the presumption that it’s “unfair” to earn tens of millions a year when people at the bottom are working much harder in a physical sense or on the presumption that such vast amounts of wealth cannot have been earned honestly, but instead must have resulted from sticking it to the little man.
Ironically, Obama—who above all seeks to model himself as this generation’s JFK—seems to have forgotten it was JFK who said “Ask NOT what you’re country can do for you, but what YOU can do for your country.” While JFK in reality had many flaws both as president and person, in statements such as these, he at least can be credited with appealing to the better angels of human nature. Moreover, in tax policy, JFK’s signature achievement was in dramatically cutting tax rates at the TOP [in that regard, he was the first “supply side” president who understood that growing the economy wouldn’t and couldn’t be achieved by just “spreading the wealth”].
In contrast, by promising giveaways right and left—all to be bankrolled by those at the top (i.e., the ultimate free lunch)—Obama has fostered and exploited class envy in a manner JFK would have found abhorrent and reprehensible.
In the words of Walter Williams: “Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. If a private person did the same thing, we would call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that’s exactly what thieves do — redistribute income.” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/feb/14/20060214-102145-9583r/
So I myself prefer the elegance and simplicity of Frank Chodorov: Taxation is robbery. http://mises.org/etexts/taxrob.asp
If it involves more government spending and demand side stimulus, the GOP clown has already tried that and it doesn’t work.
Created 2.5 millions jobs? Right, he is going to nationalize all the 18-24 year olds and force them into the Hitler Youth work gangs. Or is he going to bring back FDR’s gulag work gangs of the 1930’s?
It will in fact be reparations. Blacks will become salaried scalawags with nowork but having jobs. The unwed mothers will get mega $$ for their kids and grandma will spend it.
Gang bangers will be given amnesty and territories will be marked with paint.
Like Clintoon, who promised a tax cut for the “Middle Class”, an “economic stimulus” package that rebuilt roads, bridges, infrastructure, green technology, etc,,, this is like reading a headline or MSM article from 1992.
Instead, Slick Willy “was forced” to give us a record tax increase across the board.
Talk is cheap.....
>>BTW, has anyone noticed that Obama looks a lot like Alfred E. Neuman of MAD Magazine fame?
Mad Magazine has.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/Obama%20mad-magazine-cover.jpg
You people are what got us into this mess, you sure as sherlock are too unsteadfast to get us out. Now go play with Barry.
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