Several respected and dear friends responded strongly to a post I did on Facebook, so I will try to sort out what my point was here.
My starting point is that the electorate has spoken and spoken that it wants big government. Mr. Obama presses that and so does the leadership and rank and file in the Senate. I assert that we must accept that. It will bring higher taxes, especially on those of means.
But it also means higher taxes on the less well off. The rise in Medicare deductions for all earners is a point.
My friend Dennis asserts the "rich" have raped the poor. Well, the well off have done better for the last 20 years than the less well off. The question I ponder is: Will higher taxes and greater government spending remedy this problem?
The answer I come to is, "No." If higher taxes had been the answer, FDR's high rates would have made us wealthy. Or even Clinton's rates. None of my liberal friends have deigned to explain how with houses sizes doubling in the last 40 years, car ownership at 2-3 per household, Internet penetration at 70 percent (estimates range from 60 percent to 94 percent access), air conditioning (at about 85 percent) and a host of other objective indices could possibly be described as being "raped." (Dennis's word).
Anyone who has traveled in the Third World laughs at American assertions of "poverty" in the U.S. We do not know deprivation. If you do not know the word, look up "kwashiorkor."
Some positions seem to think that a lazy slob woke up one morning and said, "Guess I will rape the little guy today and get rich." In fact, less than half of U.S. wealth is inherited. Newsweek (RIP) ran a cover story years ago. Reporters found most millionaires got it the old fashioned way. They began as a plumber, worked 40 years, saved and lived below their means. (see "The Millionaire Next Door," Thomas J. Stanley for a full discussion)
No thinking American would decry higher taxes if our government did not waste it. Are you one of those worried about a Sudanese biplane dropping an M-80 on Sioux Falls? If not, why are allowing the federal government to burn 25 percent of our budget on military spending? (whitehouse.gov)
Does it bother you that Murtha (D-PA) had an airport built so he could get to D.C. easily? Or that Ted Stephens had a bridge built to an uninhabitable island? Or that Jamie Whitten built a waterway through Mississippi that carries almost no goods? Or that a Chicago alderman (actually a woman) says the president needs to "send some bacon" because it's a "quid pro quo."
Do you assert there are no jobs when the National Manufacturers Association polled its members and found nearly 500,000 high skilled jobs unfilled for lack of applicants?
Several years ago, I lived in a town in Georgia and a plant closed. Working in economic development, I wanted quick turnaround training to get folks back to work. What I found is that many (nearly all) collected unemployment (it was high fishing and hunting season) and figured the plant would re-open by the time unemployment ran out.
If you have not read "Losing Ground," (Charles Murray), you should. Pay particular attention to the SIME and DIME discussion (Seattle and Denver income maintenance experiment). Guarantee people an income and guess what? Their average number of hours spent working DROPS. Are they victims too?
Mr. Holland tried to set tax at 75 percent and the wealth migrated to Belgium. Americans of wealth won't leave the greatest country ever conceived, but their capital sure will.
Demonizing people of wealth will not solve a $16.4 trillion deficit. Some wealthy people are jerks; some poor people are grabby takers. But most Americans are in the middle. Want to know how your tax dollars spent? Go to: http://www.whitehouse.gov/2011-taxreceipt.
Conservatives and liberals alike must accept that our fiscal woes will take pain to solve. Higher taxes and cuts in defense and transfer payments alike. Sorry folks, that's just the way it is.
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