When I have conversations with close friends who may not agree with my fiscal conservative political view, I am always struck by one fact. Many of their views are formulated by an understanding of economics as described by the media.And when I watch the major news networks and see their talking heads, I’m dumbfounded that these guys don’t have any clue about economics or the things they are reporting on.
It’s understandable that a majority of our citizens don’t understand economics but it is unfathomable to me that reporters who are supposed to investigate the stories they report on don’t have a clue.
I am going to attempt to strip the politics out of my statement but some will never see the truth of what I am about to say. For those people who are so partisan that you can’t get your head out the sand and see the truth then you deserve the totalitarian government that will one day befall us all.
There once was a Republican President that was followed by a Democratic President and they both ruined our economy. The commonality between their presidencies was a progressive tax rate with a mid range tax above 38% and the top rate above 50%.
Both these presidents believed in price controls and caused a calamity on commodities prices and production. Both presidents policies caused high unemployment, high interest rates and out of control inflation. Who were they? Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.
Further stripping away the politics from the economics of our country, there were two presidents, one Democrat and one Republican that lowered taxes, stripped away regulations and allowed the markets to work freely and the economy boomed. They were John F. Kennedy and Ronald Regan.
When we analyze the histories here we see that tax increases “on the wealthy’ or tax decreases “for the wealthy” has no sound economic strategy, it’s just pandering and populism to garner votes and power. The real story is that the way our progressive tax system works is not beholden to how we “feel” about the rich.
To read the rest of this post please visit my blog at http://brainsnotincluded.com/
(BTW - Who defines who the rich are anyway? That’s a scary thought…huh?)
Here are the real facts of the matter. We don’t just live in the vacuum of a capitalist economy. Our capitalist economy is part of the world’s greater Capitalist economy.
The truth is that we can’t detach our economy from the world economy no more than we can tax the rich into oblivion and expect to be able to lift up the poor to a higher status. Ever since we took our economy off the gold standard we stopped employing a Static scoring methodology and moved to a dynamic scoring system.
So what does all this gibberish mean? It simply means that we can’t punish the rich without punishing everyone. Two presidents, one Democrat and one Republican, proved that raising taxes and imposing heavy regulations on a capitalist economy will kill the incentive and motivation to work and produce.
They proved that less money comes into the treasury because every thing just stops. They proved what Thomas Jefferson said about government. Government cannot create wealth, it can only redistribute other peoples wealth thereby destroying it.
These same two presidents also proved what Margaret Thatcher said; The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. And a progressive tax system with a heavy handed government is very close to socialism.
Now on the other side of the equation we’ve had two presidents that employed a very different approach. One was a Democrat and the other a Republican and both lowered the tax rate to an optimum point to encourage, incentivize and motivate the populus.
These presidents created a robust economy and even with lower tax rates on ‘the wealthy’, they still managed to increase revenue to the treasury. This issue of whether to raise taxes or not has nothing to do with economics. If it did, we’d always keep taxes low.
No, the real issue is about feelings. Well, I for one am tired of feeling good about bleeding the rich for every red penny they have. I would much rather be happy because my own coffers are full and the economy is solid.
Let’s take the politics out of our discussion about taxation and let’s use real facts about how to get an economy moving and keep it growing. Higher taxes is not the answer!
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