About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

A Look Back To March 2010 - Same Problems & Solutions Needed

Following last Friday's DOL unemployment report Carol asked me to repeat the message entitled All You Need To Know About Creating Jobs – this original message of March 8, 2010 is based on a metaphor presented to me by Professor Carbaugh of Central Washington University.  I presented it @ the last several FairTax seminars I have given in NJ & it sticks in people's minds.
 
As background, the unemployment rate in September remained 9.1% meaning that 14 million people who were looking for work could not find it.  More importantly the labor underutilization rate (known as U-6) increased to 16.5% meaning that over 25 million people are now covered by this broader joblessness rate – consisting of the aforementioned 14 million people plus 9 million people who are underemployed (part time but wanting full time work – those working part time out of necessity rather than choice) & two & one half million people who have stopped looking for work.
 
The Washington Times recently reported that the top 1 percent of income earners pay roughly 40 percent of all federal income taxes - the top 5 percent pay some 70 percent.  Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of earners pay just 3 percent.  About 47 percent of American households pay no federal income tax at all.
 
According to the Tax Policy Center, the breakdown works like this: The bottom 20 percent pay -3.8 percent (that's minus 3.8). That means they actually get money from the federal government. The second 20 percent gets even more — they pay -4.3 percent. Thus, the bottom 40 percent not only pay nothing, they get cash back.
 

The middle quintile — that 40 to 60 percent zone, which has an average income of $44,000 — pays 3.9 percent of the total federal income-tax revenue. The fourth quintile, with incomes up to $102,000, pays 15.1 percent.

So, 80 percent of American taxpayers combine to pay 10.9 percent of federal income taxes, according to the TPC — about $1 in every $9 of income taxes paid.

Now to those pesky millionaires and billionaires. The highest 0.1 percent of all income-earners (not 1 percent, zero-point-one percent), pay 16.4 percent of all federal income taxes — $1 in every $6 paid. Thus, the top 0.1 percent pay more than the bottom 80 percent, even though that much larger group made more than six times what the tiny top group makes.

BO wants to target "millionaires and billionaires" (although there are only 235,000 of them out of over three hundred million people — and FYI, that's a lot less than there were before BO took office).
 
Want to solve the problems with the above listed unemployment & income tax paying disparities?  You can narrow the degree of income inequality & reinvigorate America's middle class – refresh your memory from a year & a half ago with the piece below.  The numbers may be a little different but both the problems & their solutions remain the same today. 
 
---All You Need To Know About Creating Jobs – March 8, 2010---
 
Due to the arithmetic involved the unemployment rate was unchanged @ 9.7% in February but the more substantive statistic in our jobloss recovery was that 36,000 more jobs were lost in the month. Many people are calling on BO & Congress to switch from working on Healthcare reform & start working on creating jobs. I am asking them to stop working on both & just get the hell out of the way.
 
The way to maximize the creation of value producing jobs that increases our standard of living is for the government to stop its constant intervention & interference in the economy & unleash entrepreneurs & innovators in a true free enterprise system - which is far from what we have had in a long time. BO's policies not only don't maximize the chance for creating such jobs, they don't even minimize it - they virtually eliminate the possibility of any such jobs being produced. And of course this is by design.
 
To understand how value producing jobs are created think of the world economy as a ladder - a metaphor recently presented to me by Professor Robert Carbaugh of Central Washington University. The U.S. is currently on the top rung & developing nations with low tech labor intensive jobs are on the bottom rungs. The other countries are in between. All countries try to climb to the next rung. This works well if the topmost countries create new industries & products, thus adding another rung to the ladder like when we replaced horse drawn carriages that used buggy whips with cars. Older industries can move overseas while new jobs are generated @ home. It is when innovation stalls @ the highest rung that the portion of Americans near the bottom of the income distribution must compete with workers in developing countries. This is what we are facing today as far too many Americans are poorly educated with skills so limited that no employer can use them. It is only through constant brainwashing that the government will take care of you that would allow someone to become so ill-prepared to support themselves that they are now competing with third world people who make pennies a day.
 
Now the government intervention & interference I referred to is not limited to America's government because there is really no such thing as a fair & level playing field in the global economy of international trade. Virtually every country in the world uses tariffs, quotas, quota licenses, tariff rate quotas, export quotas, domestic content requirements, subsidies, export subsidies, dumping - sporadic, predatory, & persistent, government procurement policies, & social regulations such as the average fuel economy standards of cars to protect their workers. Of course the workers needing the most protection are the lowest skilled least educated people. Accordingly, as politicians try to buy votes to get re-elected there is no free & unfettered trade - protectionism of the weak in one form or another reigns @ the expense of the American consumer.
 
All of this falls in line with BO's plans for completing the socialism of America & people's dependence on his government. By pretending to be concerned about American workers he can talk up any program he wants that in reality will not help but most Americans are too ignorant to realize what is happening to them or our country.
 
To BO his success as President depends on the very misunderstanding he claims & pretends to protect. His policies will lead to more stagnation, no value producing jobs, & certainly more government dependence that will reward those statists in power with an anti-American agenda that preys on the populist movement through class warfare & economic illiteracy.

 

 
 

2 comments:

  1. Doug:

    The stats are astounding, especially fact that lower 20% receive net 3.8% and the lower 20% to 40% receive 4.3% of all personal income tax revenues, thus the -3.8% and -4.3% stats. The stats are worse than I thought. What a great service in advertising these stats. I will now do so in my blogs.

    And yet our current very progressive tax system is not enough for many. Many like the Wall Street demonstrators want the top 1% to pay even more. How much more 50% instead of 40%? Christina Romer, before she accepted position of Head of Council of Economic Advisors for BO (then subsequently resigned in disgrace) published an elaborate analysis of the impact of tax increases on GDP growth in the US since the end of WW2. Her conclusion was that a tax increase of 1% GDP will subtract 2% to 3% of GDP. Are the Socialist leaning unaware of this and oblivious of what a 40% to 60% tax rate did to Europe?

    But you opine what is a very likely scenario: that BO secret plan has been to destroy capitalism. He is doing this now by shifting blame for slow GDP result of his purposeful economic policies to rants of blame Wall Street, private corporations, and private entrepreneurs.

    Let’s look at Europe. At present, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal have no access to private financial markets. Two independent European think tanks concluded that the ECB is likely insolvent if one factors in all toxic securities they own. Paul Samuelson, by no means a conservative economist (but a very reputable one nonetheless) in IBD opined that in event of ECB insolvency a new European order may emerge: the world’s major creditors such as China and Arab oil rich nations may impose their own solution on the ECB, European banks and thus Europe. This would include ‘haircuts’ to private creditors and mandated public expenditure cuts. Just as the US became the economic power in Europe in the 1950’s subsequent to UK’s financial demise, China may have that opportunity in Europe. And with the US now borrowing 43 cents on every dollar soon to be 46 cents some time in 2013, China may have another larger target – us!

    Solution is for us to challenge the ‘mindset’ so ingrained in many Americans as you so effectively point our repeatedly. For us bloggers it is now time to challenge the assumption of perhaps as many as 70% of all Americans (some poll I read recently) that BO is a nice man but weak in economic expertise. Nice or not, this Saul Alinsky disciple, protégé of Rev Wright and Bill Ayers, and the one who hired renowned Communist Van Jones as a ‘czar’, is in process of destroying our economic lives. BO thinks that by destroying capitalism he will be promoted in a New World Order to share the wealth globally with he and his Alinsky disciples in charge. In a New World Order, those with the money and the ones who know how to grow the economy will demand BO get lost. This is BO’s greatest illusion and misjudgment.

    The next election will NOT be ‘free’ markets vs Nanny State. Why? Because worldwide and clearly on display in Europe, we are witnessing the beginning of the destruction of Nanny states. The ultimate money rich creditors will not stand for Nanny States.

    The next election will be ‘free’ markets vs US economic collapse / loss of US identity. Bloggers and free marketers – the time to get intimately involved in local, state, and national elections 2011 and 2012 is now! And we all need to work extra hard because of a strong American mindset that is ‘economically illiterate’.

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  2. Doug,

    Thanks for posting that analysis.

    I'm sure you are aware the Dems are looking for a way to suspend the elections in 2012. When Obama was elected I speculated that he, Obama, may very well be the last American President and I am seriously concerned that he may have found a way for this to become true.

    What if he is successful in prompting the protests against the private sector to escalate by rolling race into the equations. This could very well create riots in many cities in American and around the world. He could then declare Marshall Law and suspend the elections.

    I do pray that my theory is flawed and does not happen.

    Also, are you aware that the company who owns Zuccotti Park, Brookfield Office Management, just received a $168 million Government guaranteed loan?

    http://forum.pressdemocrat.com/view topic.php?f=14&t=8496&p=80768

    http://romanticpoet.wordpress.com/t ag/government-collusion-occupy-wall-street-brookfield-asset-management-brookfie ld-office-properties/

    The stink from Washington couldn't get much worse.

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