Answering Elizabeth George on Taxes.

Answering Elizabeth George on Taxes.As soon as I finished posting my critique of Elizabeth’s book “Careless, in Red” I noticed that she has a website www.elizbethgeorgeonline.com. On her web site are assays in which she advocates certain positions. One of these assays is on taxes.

Ms George attacked George “W” Bush even though he was not on the ballot in 2008. I might respond to these attacks in a separate post, but I do want to comment on her “reason” to vote for Barak Hussein, namely that McCain had a worse college record than Elizabeth. Her argument is specious, as someone with good grades might be a Leftist radical (like Obama) and get good grades. Obama is turning out to be a terrible President and a threat to our economic survival and personal freedoms. But, I am not going to digress.

Elizabeth writes that she would not mind her taxes being spent by the government for better care for mental patients (released at the insistence of Liberals), promoting university education, promoting renewable energy, supporting cancer research, establishing early education for disadvantaged children or helping wounded veterans. Actually Elizabeth, there is nothing to prevent you (unless Obama raises your taxes) from doing this yourself. You can contribute to hospitals and organizations that care for the mentally ill, you can set up scholarship for anyone you wish, you can buy shares of RZ and HTM (companies that need money to produce energy from geothermal wells) and there are numerous ways to promote cancer research. In my experience, Liberals like Obama, Kerry or Algore spend very little of their funds to promote these aims – they want others to pay for the bill through government programs. They deserve no credit for acting as little Robbing Hoods.

Ms George performs an even greater disservice by misstating the issue of tax cuts. Let us look at these misstatements. First and foremost is the mischaracterization of what taxes represent. Taxes are NOT taxes on wealth, taxes are levied on INCOME. Hint: that is why it is called the INCOME TAX. The top half of earners pay almost all the federal income tax. So, a “tax cut” for those at the bottom of the earning scale is NOT really a tax cut, but a transfer of wealth from those who earn more to those who earn less. It is both unfair and unethical. Why should those who earn more pay a larger percentage of their earnings? Second, the income tax is immoral. We can not go into your island abode and take your income and give it away. It is called robbery. And it remains a robbery even if the robbers get together and vote to take your money away. It is and remains legal plunder.

The wealth transfer is ineffective as a method to speed the economy and in fact performs just the opposite. First, the transfer of $250 from upper earners does not represent a net increase of purchasing power, it merely shifts who will spend the $250. Such economic stimuli do not work. We saw this when the Bush Admin gave people $600/person and we saw that Japanese efforts to stimulate their economy (as it happens by covering a lot of their beaches by concrete) failed in stimulating the Japanese economy. The situation is even worse if the stimulus is provided from future earnings, because it robs our descendants and promotes inflation. There is something else involved here, something that is not seen, at least not readily. When $250 is transferred from person A to person B, what is not seen is the work that person B would have performed for the money. Wealth transfer reduces the total national wealth.

Real tax cuts, allowing people to keep more of their earnings, DOES work in promoting a better economy. We have seen this to be true. JFK’s tax cuts, Reagan’s tax cuts and every other tax cut that allowed people to keep more of what they earn has led to a better economy. There is a very simple reason for this: high earners are the best among us to use their earnings to earn more. Allowing them to keep more of what they earn is the best way to insure that money earned will be used to grow the economy. In spite of your jeering, Ms George, the tax cuts of Ronald Reagan had ushered in a twenty five years period of high growth and increasing living standards, especially when a Conservative Congress reformed Welfare and began to limit government spending during Mr Clinton’s Presidency. You being a Liberal, it is not surprising the\at you favor increasing minimum wage. Unfortunately, that is also counterproductive. People with minimal skills are employed at minimum wage, but if that is raised, some of the jobs that pay minimum wage disappear. We can even calculate this effect.

I am not going to comment on the global warming fraud and the Cap and Tax fiasco that threatens millions of jobs to go overseas. But I will comment on your criticism of the Iraq war. How do you like Mr Obama’s Afghanistan policy? Declaring that we do not really intend to win the fight, but are willing to put in more troops is like promising candy to the Jihadists: the prospect of defeating America. As in Vietnam, Liberals will prolong the conflict by holding out the prospect of victory to the enemy, so they can fight on. By George, this was a fun conversation.

Geezer Bela in Exile, A Freedom Fighter Poet.