Chanting Points Memo: “We Have To Tax You To Prosperity!”
By Mitch Berg
It was an uncanny coincidence – if you assume that leftybloggers operate as independent agents, and why, oh, why would one assume that every one of them, from Daily Kos down through Penigma, takes their chanting points from Media Matters for America just because they’ve all been chanting them not merely in unison but in strict top-down sequence for almost a decade now, after all? – to watch the leftyblogs and leftytweeps all chanting the same basic thing almost simultaneously yesterday.
Leftytweep Chris Shields – a semi-frequent kicktoy in this space – twote yesterday:
@ChrisShields There wouldn’t be a need to tax the rich to create jobs if the rich were actually creating jobs.
Gosh – why would “the rich” – let’s broaden that out to “entrepreneurs”, “job creators” and “business” – not be throwing caution to the winds and creating jobs with gay abandon?
- Skyrocketing regulation: The regulatory environment for business – big and small – is getting downright ugly. There is no realistic chance it’s going to improve during an Obama administration, or while the Democrats control half of Congress.
- The Obamacare of Damocles: Obamacare is already killing jobs, and it’s three years away from going into effect, so we’ve seen nothing yet.
- Taxes Kill: Obama’s initial round of taxes – aimed at “the rich” who are also the investors who provide capital for investing in new business – put a huge chill on job creation. His “new” “jobs” “plan” may be worse. They all lead up to…
- Uncertainty: Nothing is ever certain in business, but managing uncertainty is a key part of a good manager’s job. And when there’s this much uncertainty – in regulation, expenses and taxes, to say nothing of the markets that are all also affected by the same regulations, taxes and expenses – the prudent response is to cut expenses and wait and see.
I find it fascinating that “progressives” like Mr. Shields think that the response to this is to “tax the rich to create jobs”.
Another “progressive” responded to the above:..
Business fears the future, so they hide under the bed where they clip coupons.
…and, when reminded of the need for prudence…
You remind me of the Vikings, who instead of playing to win, play not to lose. How’s that working out?
Which proves the old conservative adage that when it come to business, liberals are generals in the bedroom and whores on the battlefield.
September 20th, 2011 at 8:57 am
Maybe I’m not giving the progs their due, but when they write about “Job Creation” I envision green boondoggles like Solyndra, or building hundreds of miles of light rail that will never be able to pay its own way, inner city hydroponic gardens to yuppies can buy produce for twice what it costs in a supermarket, biking coordinators, the US Postal Service, etc.
It’s cargo cult science at heart.
September 20th, 2011 at 10:15 am
This @ChrisShields fellow sounds invincibly ignorant.
The Vikings analogy fails so horribly, it’s hard to comprehend how a functioning human brain (“breath in, now breath out”) could produce it. The Vikings play against other football teams under the same set of rules. The rules are the same for every other team in their league, regardless of record. Every team has an equal opportunity to pursue a prosperous record.
Not so for businesses (or people) with regard to taxes and regulation.
I wish that, when politicians were discussing tax policy, they would think less of control and “balance” and more of freedom, opportunity, and most of all: simplicity.
September 20th, 2011 at 11:19 am
I’ll give just one recent example of the rich creating jobs. Two rich guys from the Twin Cities bought the closed Faribualt Woolen Mills and reopened it. Rehiring many of the layed off people. Also providing a tourist attraction at the store there.
If the gov’t had confiscated all of their money to spend on failed solor projects in California, the mill would have remained closed and been torn down.
September 20th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
It’s a given that most liberals who are political activists are economic cretins. They believe that a command economy creates wealth. No one else does, a keynesian is not a Stalinist.
Obama’s jobs plan is not Keynesian, because he pays for it out of current GDP, via tax increases, rather than with borrowed money. It is purely redistributive.
Taxing corporations at a higher rate means that the corporations will create fewer jobs. Taxing the capital gains of “the rich” at a higher rate means less money will be invested in the economy and fewer jobs will created by the private sector. Taxing the income of the working rich means that they will spend less and fewer jobs will be created by the private sector.
The high numbers of unemployed and under-employed workers we have now looks a lot like structural, rather than cyclical, unemployment. Keynesian stimulus only works on cyclical unemployment.
Obama’s jobs plan is an admission that the future he sees for the US is a Euro-style social democracy, with economic inefficiency (eg, lower GDP growth) accepted in trade for increased income redistribution.
September 20th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
we just need to keep hammering liberats with this question:
“Out of every dollar that I earn, how much of that do you think I deserve to keep?”
(With props to Tyler Hensley, a 17 year old high school student from Napa, CA for asking this pointed question at the GOP debate in Tampa earlier this month)
We’ll probably keep getting the absolutely ignorant answers like that of elitist DemocRAT Rep. Jan Schakowsky of IL, which explains why her state is bankrupt!