"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea — God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." Elizabeth Warren Quote
The rest of us paid for?! The rest of us includes the job creators and the very people that start businesses and build factories, this includes the mom and pop businesses who are doing their best to play by the rules. They all paid taxes as well! Their work never ends, long hours into the night, worrying how they will pay for payroll. If they are successful, they deserve to be held up as examples for us all. The more they are successful, the more jobs they create, the more they are able to raise the wages of their employees. In turn, this all creates more tax revenue. It is a disgrace that a U.S. Senator is using this flawed argument to stir up class envy, to stir up people against one another. A disgrace she is using this as justification for the central planners to come and confiscate more and more from the job creators, thus killing more and more jobs, resulting in less tax revenue. Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg! Sorry, this is just nonsense.
Now if she were talking about charity that would be great. I happen to know she is not. Money helps more when given to charity then punitive taxes to government. They are poor stewards of the people’s money after all, with all the waste, fraud, corruption, debt and economic ignorance. And we are supposed to thank the small-minded politician for letting us keep some of our hard earned money?
Government cannot replace charity. The more government takes, the slower the economy gets, the less money people are able to donate to charity, with less tax revenue generated. The more money the people have, the more the economy grows, the more money people are able to donate to charity, with more tax revenue to government.
"Would that an overbearing tax burden was our only misfortune. Underneath what on the surface may seem like sarcasm is dismay and genuine sadness for those who are about to lose the opportunities they once had to become the tax overburdened elect. Indeed, the reality that those already struggling for the advancement of their employees be overtaxed to the point where they and their employees lose that opportunity as well." Kristokoff circa 2012
In response to this quote from Senator Warren that I saw on Facebook the other day.
If you wish to stay here, be accepted and respected, you should accept our gift of freedom, not destroy it. Don't break our laws and make demands that undermine our laws and destroy our constitution, the very thing that would guarantee your freedom if you would but accept it. Why should we let you stay here, let alone become a citizen, if you demand an end to what makes us all free? To become a citizen, you must accept what makes us free and thus accept what will make you free; our constitution, our democratic republic and our free market system. These things combined with learning our language will bring the most prosperity to you, your families and ours. Why not also take our economic freedom, our democratic republic form of government, our constitution and our freedom and fight for them in your respective countries? When we get a new administration and clean up the corruption in our government we will be glad to help our friends to the south fight for their freedom.
The magnets for illegal immigration must end. Sanctuary cities, Obama's executive amnesty, breaking our immigration laws, free tuition, open borders, everything that is causing the illegal flood of people must end. It is hurting too many people. They are being murdered, raped, sold into sex slavery, extorted, and used as drug mules all because of this illegal activity.
We can choose to bring in more people legally. We can choose to have a robust guest worker program. But we must put citizens first in order to help those who wish to come here legally become prosperous and contributing members of our society.
Now is the perfect time to streamline government and cut spending. When times are good they will never do it, but now that times are tough, with huge budget shortfalls, we should take advantage of it.
We need to make government more efficient and less wasteful. Get rid of the waste and inefficiencies, streamline pensions and welfare, clean up fraud and corruption, and layoff the unproductive government worker. Layoff the two or three people it takes to do the job of one person. All this will allow deep spending cuts. Combine all this with real tax cuts, not just token tax credits, and it will put money back into the private sector causing people and business to spend and create jobs.
The out of work unproductive government workers can then find productive private sector jobs and create goods and provide services. This will bring in more income that will create even more jobs and allow even more spending. The economy will grow exponentially, the GDP will skyrocket, and everyone will be able to provide for themselves, their retirement, health care, etc.
The small number of those that have legitimate needs can finally be helped. We would not need government bailouts, handouts, welfare, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, pensions and definitely not government health care.
The fraud, waste, inefficiencies and unproductive government workers combined with the resulting higher taxes and spending, just drag down the economy. The economy will increasingly slow and unemployment will rise.
The best defense against being brainwashed by “brilliant” politicians is to learn from history. If a candidate’s views contradict these historical facts they should be rejected.
History proves that too many candidates promise tax cuts but raise them instead. We now have a candidate who is actually promising tax credits on some and higher taxes on others. If someone is promising to raise taxes on some that is even more of a reason to expect higher taxes for all. History would have to be ignored to believe higher taxes on those that create jobs would actually benefit those that have jobs and wish to someday create jobs.
Labels can be put on others, but the label is not important. It is what they do, have done and plan on doing in relation to historical data that determines if they are a bad choice to be the leader of the free world.
Those of you that study history realize the failed policies that are in use around the world by countries with weaker economies, poorer citizens, oppressive governments, less freedoms, less charitable giving by citizens are slowly creeping into our government. As these policies are implemented things get worse, we are slowly inheriting these attributes. Do the proponents of these policies seek to make our great country more like these other countries? Do they realize that they are weakening our country? Do they seek to make us less powerful? Do they realize that some countries support candidates because they will weaken our country? The leaders of some of these countries are beginning to realize why we are the great country we are and they are trying to change. Ironic that they choose our best attributes, while we may be choosing their worst.
Our founding fathers may be the first to ever learn from history and thus conceived the constitution, our form of government and economic structure. Our constitution and capitalism take human nature, self-interest and the human spirit and put it to work for the good of everyone. It and a free people are two of the reasons the United States has become one of the most successful and powerful countries today, the center of the financial world, the dollar being the standard of currency, the most charitable country, etc. History proves time and again and is still proving this everywhere you look.
We must be ever vigilant against the attacks of those that would destroy our nation from within, sometimes by seemingly harmless and incremental steps; by those that would use the fear and uncertainty brought on by financial crisis against us, to call for change, a change that will ultimately allow the few wealthy ruling elite to oppress us all. The great depression and its aftermath, which continues to this day, seem to be a history lesson few of us are willing to learn.
Obama’s economic tax plan and his promised massive spending increases combined with the additional bailout and other massive spending plans of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank and many other democrats in congress will actually do what H. Hoover and F.D. Roosevelt did to cause and prolong the great depression. It is unbelievable that these politicians are willing to ignore history and possibly destroy the lives of millions of Americans.
Open your eyes and minds America, before it is too late. Ask the oppressed around the world, they will tell you. The stories of those silenced and killed by tyranny, despotism and hatred. You are still a great nation, don’t throw it all away.
Our tax system is already redistributive and we do have a lot of problems. But that is not a good reason to vote for someone who will be even worse than the last president, someone who will make the tax system even more redistributive, a tax system that will encourage greed and selfishness rather than use that greed and selfishness to benefit others, a tax system that will move all the wealth to the government elite, giving the few the power to oppress all those who voted for change and those that didn’t.
It is not a good reason to vote for a party whose congressional leaders are even more selfish, corrupt and greedy than the republicans could ever dream to be. Most democrats in America today have no representation in government, at least not with the current leaders of the democrat party. Not all congressional democrats are this way but a large and growing number are. Corruption by anyone in government should not be tolerated. Major reform throughout all government is needed.
There is regulation in government, a whole lot of it. It is a myth that Bush and republicans want to do away with all regulation. They just want to take away or reform the regulation that is actually causing problems. Some of it is a major contributor to the housing/financial crisis. It is ironic that the democrats in congress are on record covering up the corruption and ignoring the oversight recommendations. The problem is not that there is no regulation or that there is not enough. The problem is that it is corrupt. Adding even more corrupt regulation to already corrupt regulation will make everything worse. The idea is to have regulation and oversight that works and doesn’t cause more problems than it solves.
Everyone knows there is incredible wasteful spending in Washington. They could run the government and all its programs with a little over half the amount of money they use now. If you cut out wasteful spending, end programs that are not needed, streamline other programs and cut out fraud and corruption you could save even more. There is no need to ever raise taxes on anyone. They should actually be lower.
The only reason our economy is able to withstand our massive and corrupt government is because of capitalism and freedom. Centrally planned programs have crept into government, taking away the built in accountability, encouraging corruption. The bigger the organization the more corrupt it is. The more money they take from citizens the more corrupt they become. The more redistributive our tax system gets, the higher our taxes get, the more nationalized type programs creep into government and the closer we get to a socialist type centrally planned system our economy will be less and less able to withstand the increased size and corruption of government. We will eventually be crushed by the top-heavy, corrupt and massive government.
How can you expect the corrupt to clean up corruption? Since no one seems to want to fix these things. The only thing left to do is make government smaller and lower taxes, to elect those that say they want to reform government, cut spending and taxes. We could stop electing known corrupt politicians as well. We need to reject those that want to increase spending and taxes of any kind.
There are several economic facts that are ignored and not even taught in many of our schools.
First, when taxes are raised the economy slows; when taxes are lowered the economy grows. When the economy grows the government’s tax revenue increases.
Second, as long as there are greedy and/or corrupt people, any centrally planned economy, whether it is socialism, nationalized redistributive programs, etc., will never work.
Our founding fathers were brilliant when they wrote our constitution. It and capitalism take human nature; greed, corruption and the human spirit and put it to work for the good of everyone. It and a free people are two of the reasons the United States has become one of the most successful and powerful countries today, the center of the financial world, the dollar being the standard of currency, the most charitable country, etc. Socialist type systems work against human nature, dampen the human spirit and encourage corruption, which makes their failure inevitable. It takes away the human desire to be a productive member of society. History shows that some of the first settlers that came over from Europe learned this lesson the hard way. Socialist type governments have to take away freedoms and oppress their citizens in order to prolong their demise. Basically, socialism and redistribution schemes push everyone down to the “lower class”. We would all be equal at zero or close to zero, except the ruling elite and the “super rich”, empowering them to oppress the “lower class”. This can be learned by studying history, our mistakes, governments, nations, states and communities around the world. Examples of oppressive and slowing socialist type economies are everywhere. The state of Vermont is an example right here in the United States. One example of an economy growing after lowering taxes would be Ireland. They recently lowered their corporate tax rate to 12.5% and businesses are growing and flowing there from all over. The US corporate tax rate is 35%, one of the highest. This is just one of many examples.
A lot of people in this country look to Europe as the example they want to emulate. But why would you want 50% and higher taxes, 17-20 % unemployment, redundant government bureaucratic waste, no common sense in government, governments that are literally almost bankrupt, governments that do all they can to keep businesses from surviving, lower charitable giving and loss of freedoms?
The bigger the organization the more corrupt it is. Governments, unions, school systems, nationalized programs, etc., are all perfect examples, our government, particularly the current democrat run congress, being the worst in history. Our judicial system is catching up with the corrupt congress. Many judges go against the will of the people by favoring the convicted offender instead of the victim or they make unconstitutional rulings. Since no one wants to do anything about it, the only thing left to do is keep government small. Everyone is eager to go after big business but they are willing to ignore the even more corrupt federal government and many state and local governments. They are the largest single factor in slowing our economy. The more they take, the less we get in return and the more corrupt they become. The government spends twice as much money to do the same thing that can be done in the private sector. Another way to put it, as soon as the government has your money half of it disappears. Everyone makes less and many lose jobs.
The latest example is the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac financial scandal. These were pseudo government entities that were rife with corruption. Basically congress caused this melt-down and then has the audacity to blame it on the free market. During the ‘90s the government encouraged mortgage lending to people who could not afford it, under the guise of affordable housing for all. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought all these bad loans, loans that would never be paid back, from banks and mortgage companies. This is one of many examples of what happens when government gets involved instead of letting the free market regulate itself. In reality, there are laws and regulations already on the books that if enforced would provide sufficient regulation. If the government was not involved these bad loans would never have been made. There was no accountability because the federal government was backing and encouraging these bad loans. The fall-out was inevitable. Many republicans in congress including John McCain warned many times of this outcome. They and the president tried several times to pass legislation to change oversight, but it was always blocked and filibustered by Chris Dodd, who is the head of the congressional finance oversight committee, Barney Frank and many other democrats. If you follow the money you will find that many democrats and liberal organizations received the bulk of the many generous contributions doled out by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These companies were turned into political fund-raising machines for politicians. Chris Dodd is at the top of the list receiving the most contributions; Barack Obama received the second highest amount for his political campaign. Frank Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae and a Clinton appointee, stepped down because of an ethical accounting scandal. He left after running the company into the ground while taking multi-millions of dollars from the company. Now he and another Fannie Mae executive, Jim Johnson, have advised Senator Obama on economic matters in his campaign for the presidency. This is probably the largest government scandal in history yet no one is demanding an investigation. While Obama and fellow democrats are blaming the free market and republicans for this scandal, democrats in congress are not crying for an investigation the way they usually do. A lot of democrats, some republicans and many companies would be implicated if they did. The very people these bad loans were supposed to help are even worse off now. Many have lost everything. This is the classic example of big government helping its citizens. While it was necessary for the federal government to step in and take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in order to avoid a run on the banks and a major collapse, the very people who caused this problem are now directly in control. Even after all this, many of the corrupt executives of these companies are still receiving multi-million dollar severance packages. This will happen again unless they split up the companies and completely privatize them. Why is it that we need oversight committees to oversee the congressional oversight committees that oversee these government programs? The American people should demand that these members of congress resign and that an investigation be done. If they don’t resign they should be voted out of office. This is major news; the media should be demanding this as well. These scandals and crisis will happen more and more as socialism and its nationalized programs creep into government. The collapse of the Social Security and Medicare systems is inevitable as well, unless we fix or end them. It’s just a matter of when. How can we expect government to “fix” health care when they refuse to fix or end social security, especially in light of the recent financial scandal. If they nationalize health care, they would just be creating another time bomb for future generations. England is now trying to privatize their nationalized health care system after years of failure.
These are complex systems so solutions have to be well thought out. There are so many things that affect each other. It’s just too easy and common for a solution to have unintended consequences. Linear thinking is all too common in every single aspect of society, which would explain why so many “solutions” today have the opposite effect and actually make things worse. Instead of learning from these mistakes we blame everything and everyone else but the “solution”. The same “solutions” are tried over and over and because people are being misled by the proponents of the “solution”, things continually get worse.
Politicians, the media and professors today make big government and nationalized redistributive type programs that spread the wealth around sound good, this is even taught in our schools and universities, but they have the opposite effect than what is intended. They hurt those they profess to help. Socialism and nationalized programs like welfare, health care and social security bring out the worst in society. High taxes, high unemployment, people make less, the economy slows into a recession with generations of people saddled with hopelessness. In extreme cases there is only a rich, ruling elite and their corrupt friends in various industries. Everyone else has nothing.
These centrally planned economies seem to make sense in theory, but in practice they do not work. They have been and are tried over and over again and they do not work. Global evidence proves this. How many times will we ignore history and destroy peoples’ lives.
Our constitution with its bill of rights ensures our individual liberty, freedom and prosperity while protecting us from the corrupting effects of government. These socialist type programs circumvent these protections giving government too much oppressive power. Individuals crushed by the weight of government. Our government is already too big and corrupt now. Do we really want to give them even more power while at the same time removing the mechanism that protects our individual freedoms? There are those that believe the constitution is a fluid document open to interpretation. There are those in congress that seek to add a second bill of rights. There are those that wish to use judges and the Supreme Court to circumvent our constitution. We must recognize those that wish to do this and stand up to them. Education and the privilege to vote is the best way to keep them from taking away our freedoms and destroying our great country.
People from around the world still see the United States as a beacon of hope and many still believe that if they could just make it here they will succeed despite the negative propaganda from politicians and hollywood. In fact, many from other countries come here with nothing at all, some who are forced to flee their own countries. They know there are no limits to their success. This hope and opportunity for all is in danger.
If we keep government small, cut spending and cut taxes then the economy will boom, everyone will make more, more people will have jobs and unemployment will be even lower than it is now. Then we will be able to help those that really need help. Citizens will be free to give even more money to charities than they do now. When citizens have liberty and freedom of every kind including economic and the human spirit is allowed to soar, people can achieve extraordinary things which translates into a strong, robust economy.
Government is not there to give us a handout it is there to ensure that each and every citizen is free and has every opportunity to be all they can be.
